2014 Hungarian Grand Prix

Mercedes took a controversial decision to impose team orders on their championship-leading drivers during the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton was instructed to let Nico Rosberg past during the second half of the race.

Mercedes have used team orders on the pair in the past – notably in Malaysia and Germany last year. But with Rosbreg and Hamilton clear ahead in the fight for the championship the interference in their battle this year has taken on added significance.

The two drivers were running on different strategies at the time. Hamilton was on the harder tyre and expecting to make it to the end of the race without a pit stop. Rosberg, however, was intending to make a further stop for another set of softs.

Hamilton was told “Rosberg has one more stop so don’t hold him up”. Another message later gave a more specific order, “let Nico past on the main start/finish straight”, to which Hamilton replied, “I’m not slowing down for Nico”. Meanwhile Rosberg was asking why Hamilton hadn’t let him past, as he’d been advised would happen.

From Mercedes’ point of view, having Hamilton let Rosberg could have given their second car the chance to attack Daniel Ricciardo and Fernando Alonso for victory later in the race – though of course, he would have had to pass Hamilton a second time to do that, by which time Hamilton’s tyres would have left him less able to defend.

Were Mercedes right to try to impose team orders on their drivers? Does their strong position in the constructors’ championship mean the time has passed for this type of order to be necessary?

195 comments on Should Mercedes have used team orders on Hamilton?

No, once I saw Rosberg behind Hamilton, I was thinking that team orders would be imposed. However, once Rosberg didn’t stay on Hamilton’s rear, I said: “There’s no need, Hamilton isn’t holding him up”. Otherwise, Nico would have been staying at his tail. Even though his laptimes dropped from the 1.27’s to the 1.28’s while being behind Lewis. Lewis made the correct decision, and this is not compared to what happened at the Nurburgring last year where Hamilton was a lot closer to Nico.

Yeah Nico can’t complain. If he was all over Hamilton’s rear it would be a different story. Nico wasn’t even fast enough to do a quick switch of places, he was too far back.

Nico was not on the podium not because of Hamilton’s wouldn’t slow down and let him past, he wasn’t on the podium because he couldn’t get passed the Torro Rosso. That for me was the decisive moment. Hamilton earned his podium place, if team orders allowed Nico past , I don’t think you could say the same.

I feel they did the best they could for the team. Had Rosberg gone past the team would have certainly had a better result. However they also didn’t push the issue with Lewis, leaving him to fight his own race. At that point they should have brought Rosberg in to pit rather than waiting another 5 laps.

Lewis had a great drive, and perhaps had he come in after Rosburg he may have had a chance at victory too, but it was such a fine call to make. Splitting it (one to come in, one to stay out) was probably the best decision at the time.

Had Rosberg gone past the team would have certainly had a better result.

They would have (at the expense of Hamilton). But they didn’t know that- they never expected that Rosberg would catch back up to the leaders. They just thought they might give him the best possible shot at best of the rest behind the lead group.

“Rosberg has one more stop so don’t hold him up” is, in my mind, the main radio point here, and lewis never held him up. The later comment telling Lewis to slow was stupid and I think everyone can agree that it would have been stupid for them to do that, as at this point Nico wasn’t even within DRS range.

Agreed. My version of today orders:
1. Mercedes thought before the race that Rosberg as poll seater is the only man with a chance to win today, (which is totaly normal with Hamilton qualy position )
2. Hamilton would be lucky if he got a point,
3. They focused on that strategy with Rosberg visiting box one more time than Lewis.
4. When the situation changed completaly, courtesy of safety car and Hamilton good driving, Germans didn’t improvise, instead they stick to the original plan, which meant that all the hard work would go away for Lewis while Rosberg would get a chance to atack for higher position.
5. If Rosberg did press Hamilton like he did at the end of the race, team orders would have some sense, all though I’m against it, but if Nico was faster he would fought his way with Lewis as we saw in Bahrain that they can have a real fight which is the only thing that is important in this sport.
6.I’m sure that Germans will scrach their heads because of Lewis’s disobeing orders,
7. I’m really satisfied with Lewis’s decision to follow his gutes for the sake of racing and of course for his chance to win WDC,
8. At the end he was faster than Nico. Period
Great drive from Ricciardo (poor Vettel) and of course from Alonso.
P.S. It’s strange to me that Mercedes didn’t bring both cars for new rubber thus giving them eqaul chance for the final laps when they were separated by 1+ second.

“P.S. It’s strange to me that Mercedes didn’t bring both cars for new rubber thus giving them eqaul chance for the final laps when they were separated by 1+ second.”

Now, you’ve struck at the center of the issue….Why exactly did Merc decide to put Lewis on a different strategy when he was nearly 30 seconds and 8 spots in front of Nico when coming in for his second stop?
Go check the tape…that is EXACTLY the situation when they decided to put Lewis on the harder options. AND they ignored the poor results the two Williams had gotten over the last 10 laps when they went the same strategy.

I’m not saying conspiracy, I’m saying truly horrible tactical decisions bordering on questionable for various reasons. How would the race have ended with Lewis making that charge instead of Nico with a much better starting position???

@daved: what if they had put Rosberg on the same strategy as Hamilton? He would have had track position and Hamilton likely would never even have gotten in front of Rosberg in the first place.

Track position at the Hungaroring is key. Sure you can overtake some slower cars with that W05, but another W05? That’s why I thought it was weird to put Rosberg on a strategy that depended on passing Hamilton. They could have done the same for both.

This is also the only thing that makes me hesitant in my judgement of the team orders. Hamilton had track position due to being put on that particular strategy, thanks to Mercedes (having also been very lucky with the SC as compared to Rosberg). So when Mercedes asked him to move over, I think that was fair enough. The only problem of course is that Nico apparently couldn’t break DRS – or worse: Hamilton even escaped DRS range. You can’t ask a driver to deliberately drive slower in order to let the other driver by.

MattDS, you should register so we can tag you and let you know when we respond to your comments.
But anyway, NO, I totally disagree with you. Nico lost track position because he was unlucky in the timing of the safety car when Ericsson crashed. Had he not already been past pitlane entry when the SC was deployed, he could have dove in as well. RIC probably won the race at that point because he was the first driver to be able to hit the lane once they realized the SC had been deployed. By the time ROS came back around and hit the pit lanes, he came back out and was WAY down the order and had to contend with all kinds of traffic. Look at the replay…around lap 37 (when the bloody American feed went to commercial) Nico was in 10th place and Lewis was in 2nd. When it came back, they had Lewis on the prime tires. Had they put him on the options, he would have been on the same strategy as Nico with much newer tires and he came out a number of places in front of Nico (again, I can’t see where exactly because the damn US TV commercials were running then).
But think of what would have been like for Lewis had he been put on the same strat as Nico at that point with newer tires AND ahead of him in the race by a good margin!

@daved: well, actually I’ve been registered for quite some time but for some reason the login system doesn’t play nice with my browser (telling me I need to enable cookies when my browser is cookie-enabled). So most of the time I don’t even try logging in anymore. But it worked now after a few tries :)

And you’re right, I must have mixed some stuff up. Rosberg indeed never had track position after that first SC.

I feel like the team confused both the drivers… they led ROS to believe HAM was letting his past, but that’s not what the situation was, they led HAM to believe that he only needed to let ROS through if he attempted to pass…

So the team were NOT clear, unambiguous and explicit in their messages.. It would have been better if they had just told both drivers to race, said nothing or they should have been totally explicit and clear in their instructions.

I think that this is one of the better analyses of the situation that I’ve seen as of now, I think that if they told Nico that he needed to pass Lewis, he would have done so, but they told him that Lewis would let him through, so no need to push and waste the tyres behind Lewis.

“The constructors is secured” maybe, the drivers not as much as you think. lets not forget that Mercedes only DWC challenger and only none Mercedes driver to win races (yes race’s with an S) gained today instead of Nico pulling away. did Lewis learn nothing in 2007? if Dan win’s the title with some luck and DNF’s with the crazy double points in the last race it would have started here. because the next time the merc’s are fighting with Dan don’t be surprised if Nico doesn’t mind destroying Lewis race to let dan win as long as lewis doesn’t beat him.

Raikkonen was at least in a car which was clear 1st or 2nd fastest, with there being minimal difference between the 1st and 2nd fastest cars. This was in a season where those 4 cars were so superior to the rest that there was never a worry about the others taking points from them- there were only 5 podium positions taken by other drivers that year.

They should have told him not to hold him up, but Rosberg didn’t get close enough to him for Hamilton to let him past without losing a considerable amount of time. Telling him to slow down and let him by was wrong.

I just thought it was ridiculous – Hamilton started in pit lane and was fighting for a potential win. Nico wasn’t close to Lewis at all so Lewis would have had to slow down and in the end would have lost 3 pts (6 pts actually) to Nico and a podium.

To hear Nico crying that Lewis is not letting him through was pathetic when he was 1.5 seconds behind. Perhaps he should have asked JEV, Ricciardo and Alonso to slow down so he can pass them too and win the gran prix.

Team orders was a bad idea. If Hamilton had acquiesced there would have been an even bigger controversy at the end of the race because Rosberg would have caught up to him earlier. If that scenario had played out would Rosberg have been happy if the team ordered him to stand down? Or would Hamilton have been happy if the team ordered him to let Rosberg by a second time?

The answer to both is NO and that’s why they should have let them race.

I think if they had literally waited just a few more laps they would not have imposed the order because they would have seen that NR was not in fact noticeably faster such that letting him go, given the extra stop he was going to have to make, would have made more sense. This is not nearly the first time a team has had two drivers on different strategies have one let the other go due to him having to make an extra stop. What is somewhat new is that the WDC is between the two drivers in the top car, and of course it’s going to be contentious and debatable as a result. I don’t think NR would have behaved any differently than LH did, situation reversed.

Couldnt agree more. At the time i knew Mercedes would say something. HAd Rosberg been all over the back of him, maybe. He never was close enough and to go over the radio and say ‘Why isnt he letting me past?’ Cmon Rosberg, thought you were better tha that. Mercedes and Rosberg are in the wrong for this and should never of mentioned anything to Lewis. No-wonder Lewis was all stroppy on the podium.

Nothing wrong with the it at all. They would’ve seen that a win was on the cards or even a potential one-two and wanted the best result for the team. Whether Lewis should’ve obeyed them or not is another issue.

Agree with this. I think it is fine for the team to ask HAM to let ROS pass, and given how far back ROS was, for HAM to refuse. After the race, HAM, ROS and Toto all seemed to take a balanced view on it (at least publicly).

The fact is that it was a tactically poor decision. They said for Hamilton to let Rosberg past because it wouldn’t affect Hamilton’s race. As it turns out, it would have cost Hamilton a position and would have offered more points to his only title rival. Mercedes got it wrong. Hamilton said that he didn’t think his tyres would last till the end and Mercedes said he’d be fine. By the end, Hamilton was really struggling so they got that wrong too.

Luckily, Hamilton felt he knew better than his team and it turns out that he did.

Spot on @petebaldwin. I would further add…if Mercedes brought Lewis to pit at the same time as Riciardo, he could have won the race with his speed advantage. I think Mercedes failed to work out that Lewis was racing Riciardo for the pole and not racing Alonso or Rosberg. Mercedes was occupied with Rosberg for too long.

From Mercedes’ point of view it was a good call as with Rosberg clearing Hamilton quickly would have had a chance at Alonso (not sure would they be able to beat Ricciardo) and they would collect more points as a team.

From Hamilton’s point of view it was not a good call as it would have cost him a place and would extend Rosberg’s lead so he decided not to play the game.

Cannot blame either party for doing what they thought was right for them at the time.

Would not be able to blame Rosberg if he responded in kind in the future.

I don’t think Rosberg would either. They are fighting each other for the title! I don’t blame Mercedes for asking but they now have to realise that Hamilton was right to hold onto the position. If they’d have made Hamilton give up the place and it resulted in him finishing behind Rosberg, imagine how Hamilton would have taken that!

No, It is not okay to ask that because Lewis could have been on target for a win. Notwithstanding the historic value a victory from pit lane would have implied for Mercedes and Lewis, you do NOT ask your drivers to let the other driver through when a victory is in the cards and the championship is at play.

You can’t give 14 points back if Rosberg won and Lewis was 2nd…. And what about the emotional state that Rosberg is in now compared to being in front of Lewis…

Notwithstanding the historic value a victory from pit lane would have implied for Mercedes and Lewis

That is a pretty insightful comment. Never thought about that aspect of the team orders until you mentioned it.

I suppose there are all sorts of ifs and buts involved viz-a-viz strategic possibilities. Nevertheless, the possibility of Mercedes pulling off a win from the pit lane should have been a major motivator for the pit wall: “Yes! A Mercedes started from the pit lane and clinched P1!”.

It’s not as if Mercedes are scrambling for WCC points, or Nico is far ahead of Lewis in the WDC.

I certainly don’t think it was the worst team order ever. Nico still had to make a stop so that should have alleviated much of the threat for LH. It is a common order when another driver is on a different strategy and is quicker. Problem is Nico wasn’t quicker enough. LH did the right thing, but certainly shouldn’t have been shocked by the order. I would like to think LH was going to cede the position if NR was much faster, as he was in the last handful of laps…wouldn’t LH have actually looked selfish and greedy if it was more obvious to everyone that NR was…like…2.5 to 3 secs faster due to different strategies midrace, and he was trying to keep NR behind him? Moreso at that pace NR would have had him eventually, no choice on LH’s part.

Let the man through to see his side of the team’s strategy through, and see him near the end and duke it out then. NR just wasn’t hooked up enough at that point. He wasn’t earning the let through and needed to be by without delaying LH, either by LH’s own hand thru sportingly ceding to greater speed for the team’s strategy play, or by NR taking it, but neither scenario was possible without NR being on LH’s gearbox.

I’m certainly not convinced that this order was meant to do anything other than maximize NR’s chances, like they are there to do, and if that is abhorant, then why is it ok for only LH’s chances to be maximized?

I can see why they did it (to ensure that both cars finished in the best possible positions), but the drivers are fighting each other for the championship. Why should Hamilton give Rosberg any sort of advantage at all?

Do you think if Hamilton had let Rosberg past and he then pitted and caught up to Hamilton with 5 laps left, they’d have given a team order for Rosberg to stay behind Hamilton to protect the points they had so close to the end of the race? Do you think Nico would have followed the order if they had?

If these 2 guys are so close in the championship, any team order will be considered as favoring one driver over the other. The only bad side could be if they crashed, but even in that case, Rosberg and Hamiton are far ahead in the championship to hurt them much.
No team orders. Good if Hamilton disobeyed.

At the time the orders were given, everyone suspected that Hamilton would win this so for Mercedes to ask him to potentially give up a victory (from pitlane no less) while he’s fighting for the championship. It’s also important to note that this is on the heels of the summer break and the outcome will have huge emotional implication on the drivers as well as send a message for the rest of the season.

Mercedes were essentially ordering Hamilton to give up the Championship. Next time they race and Rosberg is on pole due to mechanical failure on Lewis’ car, they should ask Nico to give up the position on the 1st lap and stay behind for the rest of the race. Sound ridiculous? Well, it’s better than the team order that was issued today.

Mercedes should have pitted Rosberg the second it became clear that he was losing time. They knew he needed another pitstop, and he was well in the window for having the softs last until the end of the race.

Completely agree. However, the better option appeared to be for Rosberg to run for few more laps, but for that to work best Hamilton had to give way, which he did not. Once that became clear they switched Rosberg to the option that would normally be taken if he was really racing with Hamilton at the time. But, by then Rosberg lost too much time to make it up for the rest of the laps. A lesson learned for all parties.

I guess they saw how Hamilton lost out against Bottas in Germany because that final stint was just a wee bit too long. Still, it’s a pretty big ask of a driver to compromise his own race just to help his team mate get a shot at the win when both of them are actually trying to go for that win in their own way.

If this was the first one, two or three races of the season this would be less contentious, but when these two are the championship fight, team orders of any sort are ridiculous. Different strategies are one thing, but its up to the driver to make that strategy work. If that means by passing on the track, so be it, don’t use that strategy. Today they were in the same race. If one had no chance of the podium, then OK, but both had that chance.
I can understand the team wanting the best result for either driver (ie: they obviously thought Rosberg had more chance of the win outright), but this isn’t just about the team, otherwise there would be no such thing as a ‘drivers’ championship.
As a spectator, I’m pleased that the championship points gap has narrowed slightly.

Not a chance. Rosberg wasn’t even faster than Hamilton at that point of the race. The tyre strategy was still unclear (no one knew if Hamilton needed to make another stop, or if the rain was going to show up) and the championship the way it is, are too strong arguments to reject such idea.

This was precisely my thoughts when Nico caught up with Lewis. It would have been stupid for Nico to close up to Lewis if he was getting told that the instruction to let him by has gone out. Why destroy your tyres in the turbulent air? It looked to me like Nico was hanging back saving his tyres expecting Lewis to let him by…because thats what the team told him. Should Lewis have heeded team orders? I believe so. As long as team orders are legal, rightly or wrongly so, it has its place, and needs to be adhered to.

@jaymenon10
+1
I think that if they still had Brawn, he would have
a) been a bit more forceful with Hamilton, and told him that Nico was a full second a lap faster, and
b) the second that Hamilton said no, would have told Nico to pass on track, which Merc never did.

I’m pretty throughly convinced that had they told Nico that he needed to pass on track, and that Lewis wasn’t going to let him through, Nico would have made short work of Hamilton and probably would have won, given his pace at the end of the race

Usually, team orders would be used in such situation. But circumstances in this case are different. First, both drivers are fighting only each other in the championship and the battle is really close. Second, Mercedes will surely win constructors’ championship without breaking a sweat, so drivers actually don’t have to drive for the team at the moment.

No he shouldn’t have, unless Nico was closing on him, but he wasn’t. The way I see it Nico lost out by not being brave enough to overtake JEV had he overtaken JEV he would have won the race. At the point Lewis overtook JEV and Nico the focus should have changed for Lewis to challenge for the win. If he went 5 laps more on the soft and pitted for another soft he could have gone to the end of the race. Possibly even won it as I think he could have been 10s ahead of Alonso when Ricardo caught up. This is besides the point but I think Merc made a mistake with the strategy today, I think they were so focused on getting a good strategy for Nico that they forgot to see that they disadvantaged Lewis by changing him to the medium tyre.

Totally agree on the strategy point. I was yelling the same thing at the TV when they pulled Lewis in. I didn’t get that strat decision at all. Much too conservative and hoping the race would somehow “come to them” rather than making it happen.

They had info on the hard tyre by looking at Bottas and Massa, both were slowing after about 10 laps, the strategy would have made sense if those two were about half a second faster, or were able to do 1:28s for more than ten laps.

Completely agree with Manu and @daved. Nico compromised himself by hanging behind JEV and also hanging behind Bottas after the final set of pit stops – in my opinion he did that 2 laps more than he should have instead of executing the strategy. Lewis on the other hand made the most of what chances he got and did not waste any time. For the final 30 laps Merc could have let him stay out 2 more laps and then brought him in for the Med tires – he could have definitely gotten P2 with that. The best situation would have been for Lewis to have been on the same final 2 put stops as Nico – in which case Merc could have had 1-2. Merc was too conservative.

+1 It was like they thought they’d ‘peaked’ with Hamilton getting to 3rd/4th, enough for him for the day. Also he had better tyres available than Rosberg, so it made less sense to put the latter on the aggressive strategy.

I agree with these comments, however I did hear instructions to Lewis to use lower gears and more revs, so it sounded like Lewis had gearbox issues and this may have been a factor in favouring Nico to finish ahead.

@hohum No, just the opposite with the gears. Using lower gears and higher revs means more wear on the gearbox and you use more fuel, but go significantly faster. This is because you can be in the correct gear on the straights (a lot of the time drivers have to short-shift to save fuel) and have the advantage of being able to use the downshifts to ‘pitch’ the car into slow corners (when you downshift and put the engine right near the redline, the gearbox tries to lock the rear wheels, and this allows drivers to carry more speed into slow corners by inducing oversteer)

@zjakobs, Unless you have a degree in mechanical engineerings I’m going to tell you that you have it wrong, it is torque that limits gearboxes not hp/kw, by selecting a lower gear the strain (torque) is reduced, this is why we start in lower gears and why we can drive a car with a slipping clutch in lower gears but not in top gear.

At the moment teams use much lower revs before shifting because they want to prolong the life of the engine, Lewis was told to shift later (past the beeps) meaning that he would be getting more power out of the engine so that he could defend against Ricardo